


The News of the Day

by Gigi_Sinclair



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 04:53:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4863854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gigi_Sinclair/pseuds/Gigi_Sinclair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jimmy looks back on a lifetime with Thomas. Written for Thommy Week trope challenge. Trope: First/Last. Deathfic, but it's a happy death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The News of the Day

The first time Jimmy brought Thomas a newspaper, he was terrified.

He stood, paralyzed by fear, in the hallway outside Thomas’ bedroom for at least five minutes. It would have been more, but he heard a sound behind another door. He was even more afraid of someone finding him loitering by Thomas’ door than he was of than facing Thomas himself. He knocked perfunctorily and stepped inside as quickly as he could.

Thomas looked awful. Jimmy had expected that, of course, but his expectations had not prepared him for the reality. Thomas’ face was bruised and swollen. His lip bore a bloody wound that was sure to become a scar. _This is what I’ve done to him_ , Jimmy thought, miserable.

He didn’t mean it literally. True, he had abandoned Thomas in the middle of a fight, leaving him to take the beating that by rights was Jimmy’s, but at that point Thomas would have been injured even if Jimmy had stayed. These wounds, and how Thomas had received them, were symbolic of everything Jimmy had done to him since they’d met, of how loving Jimmy had ruined Thomas’ life. _I never asked him to love me_ , Jimmy thought, trying to be belligerent, but even he couldn’t find comfort in that.

“I can never give you what you want,” he told Thomas, as he sat by Thomas’ bedside. Jimmy would remember the words to his dying day. They were true, but not in the way Thomas thought. Jimmy didn’t lack feeling. Thomas was attractive, and funny, and sly, all qualities Jimmy valued. He was also surprisingly kind, which Jimmy found more appealing than he would have expected. But Jimmy was a coward. He didn’t have the courage to fight a couple of village thugs, and he didn’t have the courage to admit that a man could inspire unorthodox emotions in him. He would never be able to.

He could be Thomas’ friend, though. Jimmy would have thought it cold comfort, but Thomas seemed thrilled by the idea. So thrilled that Jimmy, overcome by friendship, opened the newspaper and read with him, just to have the excuse to stay a little longer.

***

The last time Jimmy brought Thomas a newspaper, he was terrified. _They would have rung me if something happened overnight_ , Jimmy told himself. He told himself that every morning, and the sensible part of him believed it. The not-so-sensible part remained anxious as he parked the Ford Anglia outside Briarwood Hall and tucked the paper under his arm.

Briarwood had been, once upon a time, a grand country manor belonging to the Earl and Countess of Leighton. Thomas thought the name sounded familiar, that their daughter had perhaps been a a friendly acquaintance of Lady Sybil’s, but it didn’t matter now. The family was scattered to the four winds, like nearly all aristocratic families, and the house had been a public rest home for the past twenty years.

“Good morning, Jimmy!” As Jimmy passed through the front door, he came face-to-face with Michael, who was sitting behind the reception desk in the middle of the foyer.

Jimmy stifled a sigh. “Hello, Michael.”

Michael was young and beautiful, as Jimmy had once been. Seeing him always reminded Jimmy that he himself was now old and decrepit, but that wasn’t why Michael made him uncomfortable. At least, it wasn’t the only reason. Michael was what once would have been called “musical” and now was called “camp.” His dark hair was forever flopping to one side. His voice was marred by a slight lisp and his laugh, which he seemed to produce an awful lot, was a loud, girlish squeal. He didn’t seem ashamed of any of this. What was more, he seemed to be able to sense something about Jimmy, something that even now, in the once-futuristic year of 1967, Jimmy didn’t wish to make visible.

On one occasion, Jimmy had come to Briarwood Hall later than usual, after lunch. Michael had been at the desk then, too. A handsome man in a posh suit and a modern, Paul McCartney haircut was standing talking to him, and as Jimmy passed, Michael astonished him by calling out, “Jimmy! I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Geoffrey.” Jimmy froze in his tracks. Geoffrey smiled, and Jimmy blurted, “Hello,” before escaping as fast as his ageing legs could carry him. When he’d told Thomas about it, Thomas laughed.

“It’s the modern world, Jimmy. Anyway, what did you think he thought about us, that you’re my saintly, devoted cousin or summat?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t. What he did know what that he was too old to see much more of this new world.

Today, Jimmy forced a smile. There was nothing wrong with Michael, he reminded himself. If anything, he was one of the more reliable staff members at the home. “How’s Thomas this morning?” Jimmy asked.

“Oh, his friendly old self.” Michael grinned. “Magda’s taken him out for a stroll before the sun heats up too much. It’s meant to be a hot one today.”

“How lovely.”

Michael looked at the newspaper under Jimmy’s arm. “You’ve seen the news, then?”

He could have feigned innocence and asked, “Which news?” At one time, he would have done so, but he was no longer quite that disingenuous. Instead Jimmy said, “Yes.”

“Remarkable, isn’t it?”

“Indeed,”Jimmy agreed, and climbed the formerly grand staircase to Thomas’ room.

Thomas had been as reluctant to move here as Jimmy had been to let him. Jimmy could take care of him, he thought. He always had. Even though he was now in his late sixties and Thomas well past seventy and not in good health, they got along perfectly well on their own. Then, Thomas took a fall and broke his hip. That was when the doctors discovered the cancer. As soon as the word was uttered, Jimmy and Thomas both knew Thomas wouldn’t be going home again.

Still, it wasn’t all bad. Thomas’ room had once been a family bedroom, and while the furniture had taken a turn for the institutional and the lush carpets long since replaced by cold tile, he and Jimmy still got a laugh out of the thought of him sleeping “upstairs.”

Jimmy placed the newspaper on the end of Thomas’ bed and went over to the window. The Bavarian Magda was wheeling Thomas around the gardens. They put Jimmy in mind, inevitably, of Downton Abbey, and of the early days of his relationship with Thomas.

After being dismissed by Lord Grantham the night of the fire, Jimmy had wandered, at loose ends. He’d stayed in Yorkshire for a while, bouncing from job to job and village to village, but it was clear that was going nowhere. Finally, he’d bitten the bullet and moved to London, to see what he could make of himself there.

He hadn’t made a lot, but he did make something. Jimmy found a job in a small hotel in Belgravia. He’d started off low, as a bell boy, but his good looks and, he liked to think, his charming manner soon saw him promoted to desk clerk, and then concierge. By 1928, he was practically running the place, when a certain Thomas Barrow came in for a job interview.

Thomas swore up and down that it was a coincidence. Jimmy had made him swear it again later, as they sat in the hotel bar, and again later still, as they lay in bed together in one of the empty guest rooms. Really, though, he didn’t care, one way or the other. Leaving Thomas had been a mistake. Jimmy had known that when the cart carried him away from Downton, just as well as he knew it in 1928. The difference was that now, he wasn’t too afraid to do something about it. Thomas was surprised, at first, but he didn’t object. Quite the opposite. Within three weeks, they were living together, discreetly of course. They didn’t stop for eleven years.

When the next war came, Jimmy and Thomas were too old to fight, but Thomas wanted to help. Jimmy didn’t understand why, not after what they’d been through the first time around, but Thomas wouldn’t be dissuaded. He went south, to work in a hospital on the coast that was overwhelmed by the boatloads of wounded and dying men coming over the Channel. There was nothing down there for Jimmy. He stayed in London as long as he could, until the hotel was bombed flat, then went back north, to escape the devastation. At the peak of the war, Jimmy found himself the last place he’d ever expected to be: Downton.

The Granthams were all dead or gone. The Abbey had been taken over by the Women’s Land Army, the ornamental gardens torn out to plant potatoes. Mr. and Mrs. Bates were still in the village. Mrs. Bates fretted over her two grown sons fighting in France, while Mr. Bates ran the corner shop and was as insufferable as ever. Jimmy was planning on leaving, forever wandering, when he ran into Daisy Mason.

She had never remarried. She had bought the farm where her late father-in-law had once been a tenant, although it had now been taken over by the Home Office to produce food for a starving nation. Jimmy stayed with her, for lack of better options. As seemed to be the way with him, a quick visit stretched longer, and longer. When VE Day finally arrived and peace returned, Jimmy knew there were a lot of people that expected him to marry Daisy and stay for good. Daisy wasn’t one of them. She packed him a lunch and a flask of tea and waved him off at the train station, and he went back to London, to find Thomas again.

“Here we are, Mr. Barrow.” Jimmy turned as the nurse Magda pushed open Thomas’ bedroom door.

“All right, all right, you don’t need to wheel me in like a child,” Thomas grumbled, pushing his wheelchair forward himself. “Oh.” He glanced up. “Hello, Jimmy.”

“Hello, Thomas. Good morning, Magda. How was the walk?”

“Oh, I do not think Mr. Barrow was so fond, ya?”

“No I bloody wasn’t. It’s as hot as the devil’s drawers out there. The last thing I need is to be bloody pushed about the garden like a baby in a pram.”

“Thank you, Magda,” Jimmy translated. Magda left, and Thomas rolled himself across the narrow space to his bed.

“Where are my fags?” He rifled through the bedside table. “You haven’t stolen them, have you?”

“Why would I?”

“You don’t like me smoking.”

“No, I don’t. But we’ve agreed it’s pointless for you to stop now.”

“Ha.” As if on cue, Thomas began to cough, hacking and sputtering. Jimmy fetched him his oxygen tank, rolling it over and holding the mask over Thomas’ face until Thomas batted him away. After a long moment, Thomas handed back the tank and began the search for the cigarettes anew, seemingly unmoved by the irony.

Jimmy had first noticed the coughing a few years after the war, in the early 1950s. He and Thomas moved back in together as soon as they found one another, but London was devastated and times were hard. Jimmy found work, this time as a waiter in an upscale restaurant, but he was getting older. It was harder to be on his feet all day. He came home more tired than he’d ever been. And, although he denied it and denied it, Thomas wasn’t well. It was hard for him to catch his breath, difficult for him to quell his fits of coughing. _Emphysema_ , the doctors said, with a finality that didn’t leave much room for hope.

One night shortly after the diagnosis, Jimmy and Thomas sat by the wireless listening to the new Queen address the nation. Rather, Jimmy listened, trying not to hear Thomas wheezing beside him, until Thomas suddenly said, “You’re going to think I’m mad.”

“Why?”

Thomas looked at him. He hadn’t changed much over the years. His hair was almost entirely grey and his face was lined, but he was still the same Thomas. Jimmy, on the other hand, was unrecognizable as the person who’d once turned heads and melted hearts all over England. “I want to get married,” Thomas said, and Jimmy stared at him.

“What?”

Thomas cleared his throat. “There’s a priest in France who’ll do it. A soldier told me about it during the war. He married his…sweetheart over there.”

Jimmy opened his mouth, then shut it again. “But we’re not Catholic.”

“Jimmy.”

“I know.” But the idea of it made Jimmy feel queasy, and not in a way that was good. Or bad, either. He couldn’t say how he felt, exactly, only that this was honestly something he had never considered before.

“I’m dying,” Thomas said, matter-of-factly.

“No, you’re not.”

“I am. And this is what I want. It’s my dying wish.”

“It’s not like finding a bloody magic lamp,” Jimmy snapped. “You don’t get to make a wish and I have to make it come true.” But Jimmy couldn’t deny him it. He couldn’t deny Thomas anything. Two months later, in the bombed out shell of a former church in Normandy, he and Thomas dressed in their Sunday best and stood before this strange priest to say their vows. It was like any other wedding, except the only witnesses were the mice and a raven that perched on the ruined steeple and watched with interest. “He’s not going to object to the marriage, is he?” Thomas joked, but Jimmy could see how much it meant to him. It meant a lot to Jimmy as well, more than he thought it would. So much that he wore the wedding ring even when they were back in England. Everyone knew he didn’t have a wife. He assumed some people would wonder what it meant, but nobody asked, and slowly, Jimmy stopped caring.

Of course, Thomas had always been sneaky. He got his wedding and was predicted to die within the year, but he didn’t. He lived on, and on. Now, they’d been married close to fourteen years, had known each other for forty-five, and Thomas was still coughing and still wheezing and still alive. 

But not for much longer. Jimmy knew that, and he knew Thomas did, too. Thomas finally found his cigarettes, in the pocket of his spare dressing gown, and held up an arm. Wordlessly, Jimmy helped him move onto the bed, then rolled the wheelchair into a corner. “I’ve brought you the paper,” Jimmy said, passing it over. He rarely did anymore. Even with his spectacles, the small print was difficult for Thomas to read. Still, Thomas squinted and peered at it myopically.

Jimmy didn’t say anything. He waited for Thomas to find the article, and find it he did. “Bloody hell.” Thomas shifted on the bed. “What’s that say, then? I can’t be reading it right.”

“You are.” But Jimmy took the newspaper anyway and read aloud. “'After intense debate in the House of Commons, the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was yesterday given Royal Assent. The bill renders legal homosexual activities that occur in private between two men, both of whom have reached the age of twenty-one. Lord Arran said, ‘I ask those affected to show their thanks by comporting themselves quietly and with dignity. Any form of ostentatious behaviour now or in the future, or any form of public flaunting would be utterly distasteful. It would serve only to make the sponsors of this bill regret that they had done what they had done.'”

He handed the paper back to Thomas.

Thomas snorted. “Christ. Does he want us to kiss his arse, too?”

“Probably afraid he’d enjoy it.”

Thomas laughed. It devolved almost immediately into coughing. Jimmy waited. “Still,” Thomas said, when he could speak again. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Nor did I.”

Thomas held out his hand. Jimmy took it. Thomas smiled, and the wrinkles cleared away from his mouth. For an instant, Jimmy could almost believe they were young again. “Remember the first time you brought me a newspaper?”

“Of course.”

“I’d just taken a walloping for you,” Thomas said, anyway. Even now, the memory brought Jimmy a twinge of shame. “You asked me why.”

“Because you’re a rubbish fighter,” Jimmy countered. It was no good. They’d been together too long, and Thomas saw through him.

“Because I love you. Always have. Since that first day you waltzed into Downton like you owned the bloody place.”

“Me, too.”

Thomas’ eyes snapped up. They were distorted behind the thick spectacles, but Jimmy could still see the emotion in them. “Really? From the very start?”

“Well, I liked the look of you from that moment. Why’d you think I didn’t rush to cover up when you caught me getting into my uniform?” Jimmy had always liked people admiring him, any people, but with Thomas, he’d liked it even more. It had taken him an embarrassingly long while to understand why. “The love came later, I guess. But once it was there…” Jimmy shrugged.

“It never went away,” Thomas filled in. Jimmy shook his head. “Not for me, either, Jimmy. Never will. Not ever.” His voice was weaker now. He cleared his throat, but it didn’t seem to help. He gave Jimmy the newspaper. “Here, take that would you? I need a rest after that damned walk.” Jimmy took it, but didn’t let go of Thomas’ other hand. He couldn’t let go, he found, and he wouldn’t, not if his life depended on it. Thomas lay back, not bothering to remove the spectacles. Slowly, gradually, Thomas’ breathing grew quieter and his grip grew lighter.

Jimmy held on, even after Thomas’ hand relaxed entirely. He didn’t know how long he stood there, Thomas in one hand and the newspaper in the other. When he finally did move, it wasn’t through any conscious decision to do so. He watched himself place Thomas’ hand carefully on the bed, then remove Thomas’ spectacles. He folded the newspaper and put it on the bedside table, the spectacles on top. Then, after one last, long look, he went to the bedroom door and called for Michael.

**Author's Note:**

> The More You Know: The article Jimmy reads is a paraphrasing of an article that appeared in The Times on 28 July 1967, the day after the Sexual Offences Act received Royal Assent.


End file.
